The Wolf in Sheep Clothing

Wouldn’t it be really cool if there were some sort of vitamin that you
could give to your loved ones and it would automatically make them
supportive of all of your ideas and dreams? Wouldn’t that be really
cool?

The reason it would be so cool is because the people who are the closest
to us have the biggest affect on our life.

If your circle of friends do not see your vision, do not believe in your
dreams, feed you negative thoughts and are always negative, it’s hard to
stay positive in your thoughts and it’s also hard to believe in yourself
wholeheartedly.

Sometimes your family and friends can be your worst enemy when it comes
to realizing your dreams.

One thing that I have learned from my experience and from talking with
others, is that our spouses, our parents, our children, our best
friends, our closest circle could be the worst people to be around when
we are first realizing our dreams. But if we manage to get around their
negative vibes and actually start to realize our dreams, they will be
the first to want to reap the benefits. Ain’t that crazy?!!

Back in the day, in another life (at least that’s what it seems like) I
used to be a party promoter. I created, produced and promoted huge
parties in New York City. Although my parties were huge and I would have
all the right celebrities and the right guests, it was very rare that my
friends and family attended my parties. If I told them that I was having
a party, they would say “Oh, that’s nice,” but they wouldn’t attend.

If one of my friends DID attend, they always wanted to get in for free.
I didn’t have a problem with that, but the following week, my friends
and I would go out to someone else’s party and would easily, without
questions, pay anywhere between $20-$30 to attend. But for my parties,
my friends and family didn’t want to pay anything—because they knew me.
It wasn’t like they were supportive of me when I decided to do these
parties. In fact, if I had listened to my friends and family, I would
have thought that it was impossible to do what I wanted to do. “Giving
parties in New York? Girl, what are you - crazy? You are going to lose
all of your money! You’ll never pull it off! You must be out of your
mind!”

But I went on to do it for over 8 years.

The truth is your friends and family are not trying to hurt you when
they say these things. They actually THINK they are trying to protect
you. They work somewhat like our ego. Remember we discussed the ego last
week? Well, they are actually trying to protect us from hurt. That hurt
being they feel we won’t realize our dream and so they feel they will
cushion the fall before we start to spiral down.

They also have a hard time seeing us DO the things that we want to do.
For instance, let’s say you went to your parents and told them that you
want to be a huge rap star.

Your parents work a nine-to-five, have always worked a nine-to-five and
have plans of working a nine-to-five until it’s time to retire. Working
a nine-to-five is all they know. Their parents worked a nine-to-five and
everyone they know works a nine-to-five. They think that it would be
best to steer you towards getting a nine-to-five because that is the
only way they know about creating a life. Being a rap star seems like a
dream, an unrealistic dream at that—something that happens to other
people—not to people they know. They don’t want you to get disappointed
and end up 40 years old still chasing a dream.

Oftentimes our loved ones don’t know how to THINK BIG. It seems crazy to
think that we could do something outside of what everyone we know does.
So, when you want to do something that doesn’t fit into the norm, it’s
hard for them to swallow.

One thing I like to do is to highly encourage you to THINK BIG.

There’s a saying that if you want to get something that you never got
before, you will have to do something that you never did before.

It’s hard for our friends and family to even think about doing things
they have never done before.

Right now, I’m working on something that is really big. I’m developing a
learning center where people will take courses that will teach them
about getting in touch with their spirit; listening to and following
their spirit. The center is going to be huge.

When the vision first came to me, I was so excited. I immediately told
my husband my entire plan. Although he listened, I noticed that he
didn’t seem to share the same excitement about my idea as I did. So, I
asked him what was the matter. His response was that sometimes he thinks
I get a little carried away with big dreams that he doesn’t think I can
pull off.

That’s only HIS opinion. Not mine.

The Bible tells us with God ALL things are possible. And that’s the
philosophy I like to live my life by.

So, what do you do when you find yourself in a situation where your
inner circle is non-supportive of your dreams and desires?

Napoleon Hill tells us in his book “Think and Grow Rich” that it is
important to develop a Master Mind Alliance.

Almost everyone that I know personally and everyone that I have read
about who are living their dreams all have created their own Master Mind
Group.

What is a Master Mind Group?

A Master Mind Group is a group of people who all have the same mind set.
Their mindset is positive. They don’t believe in being negative. Their
main goal is to support each other in whatever the other one is doing.
They may have different dreams and different aspirations, but they know
that to live your dreams you must think, do and be a certain way. They
are that way. Giving each other support and help in any way they can
makes a perfect Master Mind group.

Let me explain how it works: At one point, my brother and I formed a
mastermind alliance. Your group doesn’t have to be a bunch of
people--just one other person can form your group.

Well, my brother and I would call each other early every morning and
check in. I would tell him all that I had planned to do that day and he
would tell me everything that he had planned for the day. The next day
when we spoke with each other, I would go down the list of things that
he said he had to do the day before and check to see if he had actually
done everything that he was to do and vise versa. It was a sort of check
on each other. Oftentimes we would find that something I was working on,
he would have an answer or know someone that I could talk to in order to
get an answer and again, vise versa.

What the mastermind meetings did was keep me focused and on point. I
knew that I had to be accountable to him the next day. If I said there
was something that I had to do, it was his job to keep my mind on doing
it. Because I was accountable to someone, I didn’t want to show up the
next day and NOT complete the things I said I would complete. It kept me
on point.

Now, my brother lives in Pennsylvania and I live in New Jersey so we
used the phone for our meetings and didn’t get much of a chance to meet
face-to-face. However, I encourage you go get someone that you can meet,
occasionally, face-to-face.

ACTION POINT: Make it a point to stay away from negative people--even if
the negative people are your closest friends. Break away from them.
Develop new friends who are positive and supportive. If you can’t get
away from the negative people because they are your spouse or family,
then simply stop sharing your dreams with them. It may be hard, but you
benefit nothing by sharing your dreams with them. They are dream killers
and will close the coffin on all of your dreams.

Develop a Master Mind group. Find at least one other person who you can
share your dreams with and will make each other accountable for each
other’s success. Meet with this person every single day. If it has to be
via telephone, so be it. Or, it may have to be via email, that’s cool
too. But you should make it a point to meet at least once a week, face
to face.

By developing a mastermind group, you will immediately see progress in
your goals and dreams.
 

Dawn Fields is a motivational speaker, author and coach. She has an amazing way of reaching you with her down-to-earth style and her ability to make the impossible seem possible. Sign up for her FREE weekly newsletter by sending a blank email to mailto:yourlifespurpose-subscribe@topica.com.